Good choice Matt. If you would have insisted on buying a brand new laptop for $1,290 you would have been really limited to stripped models without the goodies and expansion the Dell Inspiron 8000 offers. I hope you realize the i8000 is a desktop replacement and not really suited for frequent travel because of it's size/dimensions/weight. It's still a lot more portable than lugging around a rig, modem, mouse, speakers and monitor but it's not a featherlight 3-4 pound laptop either.
I would recommend three upgrades for your laptop:
1) Buy more RAM, at least 256MB total.
2) Erase that Win ME crap and install W2K.
3) Eventually find a larger and faster hard drive, at least 20GB 5400RPM.
Yes it doesn't have a GeForce2Go but you saved a huge wad of money and didn't have to "settle" for some wimpy ass Celeron HP laptop or the like.
Does anyone know if it's easy or difficult to replace the 32MB ATI 4M with a GeForce2Go? Just a matter of pulling out the old and plugging in the new and installing drivers or is it more complicated than than?
Again congrats and enjoy your new machine, it's nice that Dell offers the same warranties on their refurbs as they do their new PCs.